Fake news is a product of the internet that is not transparent. Fake news can spread online because as users we have no idea where any of the content we see comes from.
Ramesh SrinivasanThe point I'm trying to make is if these networks of communication technologies are owned, monetized, surveilled, and classified by those with power - very few people, mainly white men in Silicon Valley - then it is a global village build upon the ideas, visions, words, and protocols of the few. So it's not global - it's like Epcot center. It's like Disneyland: a small worldview of the larger world.
Ramesh SrinivasanI'm really interested not just in privacy for the individual but respect for the local communities. And I think we have a problem with both and whenever industries kind of become almost monopolistic they have to be challenged to be more responsible. We can challenge them in the press, in the courts and in regulation.
Ramesh SrinivasanIn its early days the Internet seem to be a counter cultural space and an anti corporate space, now is the place for corporate economic production. What the internet is now isn't what it used to be and it doesn't have to be what it turns into.
Ramesh SrinivasanWe are at a moment that some of the Silicon Valley companies are feeling the pressure. These days the founder of Twitter apologized that his company promoted some of the things that elected Donald Trump. You don't see that much of these apologizing from Google. From Mark Zuckerberg you are hearing a little bit more of it, but he is a little more "Oh, well, this is what happens because the internet scaled up and everybody has fake news; oh, we are gonna build a better technology".
Ramesh SrinivasanIf you share information widely, but you present that information in ways that fits your own view, you're actually still misrepresenting. So instead what you should do is figure out ways to build systems that allow people to experience and classify their information in ways that are meaningful for them.
Ramesh Srinivasan